Legend of the Skyfish Review

Legend of the Skyfish is a level based adventure game promising gorgeous hand-painted environments and creatures, intricate action puzzles and epic boss fights.

Little Red Hook (who is rescued by the Moonwhale when the Skyfish rises from the ocean…) must use her fishing rod to attack enemies, explore the three themed lands and defeat the Skyfish.

On the positive side, the levels are colourful and the enemies have fairly distinctive characteristics. Initially, the music is exciting and certainly gives the player a sense of adventure, and the levels progress slowly enough for anyone to pick up the game from the beginning. Legend of the Skyfish is bursting with achievements and with 45 levels and the ability to upgrade the rod and Red’s outfits, perhaps at least some people will feel that they are getting their money’s  worth.

Sadly, despite the fact that I leapt straight in with abundant enthusiasm after the promising storyline and appealing music, this was, unfortunately, not quite the game I was hoping for. I presume it was created to be played on touch screen devices, as it was just generally awkward to control on the Xbox using an unfamiliar set of buttons that were not natural to adapt to and hindered smooth gameplay.

About half way through the 3rd  area, it all just became rather tedious and I began to wish that Little Red could just run everywhere instead of dawdling about getting stuck on invisible objects. Perhaps it was an ability that I didn’t unlock, but I just do not possess the sanity to replay it to determine if this is indeed the case or not.

Disappointingly, there were only 2 “epic boss fights” (excluding the “Monstrous Skyfish” battle) which seemed to take only seconds to complete. Sadly the music began to irritate me and I had to mute it which is extremely unusual, especially considering it was actually so inspiring to begin with. Perhaps this was just a reaction to the rising level of frustration throughout the game.

Little Red Hook began to get stuck and the only way to replay from the check points was to actually kill her which was a bit morbid and made me question the message that it could send to some children considering it is “Great for all ages!”. Infuriatingly though, this didn’t even work at all at one point, because it involved going back through the beginning to complete the level. So if you restart from that checkpoint in the second area, all the gates that had been opened where you began are now locked so it is impossible to complete, rendering this particular checkpoint completely and utterly useless!!!

I did not experience the “intricate action puzzles”… There were some buttons to press and switches to open gates and perhaps that was the point, to puzzle children and to leave the adults puzzled as to where the puzzles are (after all, I seem to have been left intricately puzzled)?

I was not won over by the “grappling hook mechanics” and “unique” fishing rod because it is predominantly used to whack enemies and pull you over gaps although, thrillingly, you do get to (spoiler alert) hit a big fish with it at the very end.

Little Red Hook began glitching all about in the sea and for the first time in my life I was considering whether it was even worth carrying on (with the game). The truth is that I would definitely not have endured all 45 levels to the final battle of the illusive Skyfish, but when I arrived at this point, I felt a sudden sense of relief that I could soon just carve out the review, after finally staring that possessed beast from the deep in the eyes and slapping him in the face repeatedly with my “unique” rod!  Concluding with the fittingly predictable grand finale: And they all lived happily ever after, the end.

Conclusion

All in all Legend of the Skyfish began promisingly, skilfully luring the player in with tales of exciting music, beautiful visuals, intricate action puzzles and epic boss battles. Combined with the strange controls, technical glitches and much of the former mentioned missing, however, it became increasingly frustrating to play and slowly chipped away at my sanity. Sadly I wasn’t hooked as my patience soon wore fin, but at least the game wasn’t a complete pile of carp.

This game was tested and reviewed on Xbox One. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version.
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Good
  • Bright and colourful throughout
  • Unique enemy characteristics
  • There's nothing quite like clouting a possessed fish in the gob
Bad
  • Glorified features re: puzzles, bosses and age rating
  • Unfamiliar controller button assignment
  • Complications with level continuity and character glitches
  • 45 levels of numbing inevitability
5
Average
Gameplay - 4
Graphics - 7
Audio - 6
Longevity - 3
Written by
As a child I enjoyed Puzzle/Logic, Adventure, Platform, Racing and Simulation games on the PC, and keeping myself sane at numerous family events on my Game Boy Pocket. Now I generally play Action-Adventure and Music/Rhythm console games, but I will forever be captivated by a beautiful game soundtrack.

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